One More Year Dept.

The exploding problem of high-speed drives; a device that might kill off the floppy for good; 4G in India?

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One More Year Dept.: In case you're wondering when writable DVD devices are going to be cheap enough that we'll see them selling for $199, the experts say that this may happen in time for the holidays in 2004. A slew of new support circuitry has been announced that should make prices plummet. After this happens, we'll discover which of the standards will win. It's still a toss-up.

More than the Market Is Exploding Dept.: While I was researching the CD-R business last month, more than one source told me to be leery of high-speed CD readers and explained why it's unlikely we'll see speeds go beyond current offerings using standard speed-up methods: It's just plain dangerous. The problem with platter speed is that discs are unstable at high speeds and have literally exploded in the drives. Since the standard speed of a CD is 200 rpm, a 50X drive suddenly cranks speed up to 10,000 rpm and starts to shake like a load of laundry. A disc can explode like a flywheel, sending sharp shards of polycarbonate all over. Apparently this has happened in the labs, and all the companies are freaked about liability issues. The multiple-head Zen Technologies drives achieve virtual high speed without cranking the platter speed up. They're safe.

Another problem with high-speed drives, especially the high-speed writer, is that the drives are all optimized for the fastest write speed, and error rates tend to increase when you drop the speed, because of jitter. To run many of the newer 40X and faster write-speed drives, you have to use more expensive media to satisfy the demands of the drive. And often, the drive won't agree with the computer system and will never write at full speed. Sounds like a marketing problem to me.

What should the end user do? Well, according to a few anonymous experts, the absolute best combination CD-R and CD-R/W drive ever made was the now-discontinued Plextor 12X (12/10/32). You can still find this drive in the channel, but it probably will have disappeared from the market by year's end. Some drives are available from Plextor as refurbished units for $75 (www.plextor.com, under Refurbished). Get one while you can.

The Death of the Floppy Dept.: With CD-R and other technologies, there is no reason to use a floppy disk for data transfer. But what about using floppies as a read/write medium? I've seen a lot of technologies come and go, but one that immediately impressed me was the odd little SanDisk Cruzer, a pocket-size I/O flash memory holder that plugs into a USB port and works great as removable rewritable memory. The device is designed to suck in an SD memory chip, and with the push of a slide button, a USB connection pops out and is immediately recognized by Windows XP as removable media. SanDisk announced the device at CES in January and began shipping in the spring; I didn't think much of it until I needed to download from SD memory.

The Cruzer worked extremely well; clearly, this device or something similar should replace the floppy disk for removable media. A 128MB SD chip and the Cruzer sells for around $100. These kinds of devices will become dominant when computer makers get a clue and put one or two USB ports in the front of the machine. Of course, you can always get a hub and put it in an easily accessible place. But until people find the USB port useful, they probably won't buy hubs.

Funny News from India Dept.: According to one report, the Indian government is pushing India's telecom industry to be the first to adopt 4G cell-phone technology. This is amusing. I have never even seen a specification for 4G, and most of the world is still waiting for 3G. Maybe this is just an excuse to do nothing. Smart move, if so.

Buzzword of the Month Dept.: Just when it looks as though optical or holographic technology is going to kill off the hard drive, something new comes along. The latest invention is from the State University of New York, and it's called ballistic magnetoresistance (BMR). It's a new effect that can increase the areal density of a hard drive by an immediate factor of 3,000. Yikes. That would mean today's 100GB drive would deliver 300,000GB, or 300 terabytes. Bloatware can stop trying to compete with any of this. Digital photography is our only hope to use up that kind of capacity.

Mea Culpa? Dept.: Recently, I criticized IBM and suggested unionization. I also commented on IBM's overtime policy, which is mostly nonexistent for executives (as with most companies), but I hinted that nobody ever got overtime at IBM. More than a few happy IBMers said that they got overtime and I was wrong. Noted. Of course, I also received some interesting anecdotes that I'll save for the memoir.

Genuinely Interesting Hardware Dept.: Since my family has beaten this device to death, I have to heartily recommend it for everyone. It's the smallish yet fast and inexpensive Samsung ML-1210 600-dpi laser printer ($199). A marvel. It's incredibly compact, attractive, quiet, and just plain cool. It runs at a fast 12 ppm, too. Perfect for the desktop. Get one if you see one. It's hard to believe the company can even offer this technology for the price. Seriously great!

John Dvorak is a columnist for PCMag.com and the host of the weekly TV video podcast CrankyGeeks. His work is licensed around the world. Previously a columnist for Forbes, Forbes Digital, PC World, Barrons, MacUser, PC/Computing, Smart Business and other magazines and newspapers. Former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. Has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, Vancouver Sun. Was on the start-up team for CNet TV as well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) was host of Silicon...
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